New House speaker wanted

OPINION:

SAN FRANCISCO — President-elect Donald Trump is bringing foreign leaders to heel, unveiling SoftBank’s $100 billion, 100,000-job investment in America and otherwise dominating the domestic scene and the world stage. Conversely, House Speaker Mike Johnson is failing Mr. Trump, betraying America’s taxpayers and displaying a level of weakness that makes baby chicks look tough.

Mr. Johnson, Louisiana Republican, yanked a 1,547-page bipartisan omnibus spending monstrosity after its stench nearly asphyxiated Department of Government Efficiency leaders Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, Mr. Trump himself and the 77 million people who elected him and Republicans to erase what this noxious measure would have enshrined.

The omnibus spending package would have:

• Shielded congressional emails from subpoenas.

• Handed Congress a $6,000 annual pay raise.

• Reinvigorated COVID-style gain-of-function research.

• Funded $3 million to inspect molasses inspectors.

• Spent $15 million to make recycling more handicapped-accessible.

• Underwritten Vice President Kamala Harris’ electric bus program.

• Rescued the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, a hotbed of anti-conservative censorship.

• Corrupted federal lingo from “offender” to “justice-involved individual.”

“Who wrote this bill?” my revolted Fox News colleague asked Wednesday night as he dissected the beast. “The Republicans have the majority. I swear to God, the Squad wrote this thing.”

This gargantuan mess violated Mr. Johnson’s pledge not to insult taxpayers with yet another pork-infused Yuletide omnibus.

“There won’t be a Christmas omnibus,” Mr. Johnson told journalists on Sept. 24.

“We have broken the Christmas omni, and I have no intention of going back to that terrible tradition,” he added. “We don’t want any buses. We’re not going to do any buses, OK?”

Never mind the test of time. Mr. Johnson’s words did not survive the test of 90 days.

Either Mr. Johnson blatantly broke this solemn promise, or he preemptively lied through his teeth as he cooked up this Yuletide assault on the American people.

Mr. Johnson moans that he cannot control Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer. But nothing stopped Mr. Johnson from rallying Republicans behind austere legislation months ago. He could have called Mr. Schumer’s bluff: Embrace House legislation or send a pricier measure to a conference committee for reconciliation. Both houses could have worked out ensuing compromise language.

As for last week’s deservedly aborted bill, if Mr. Johnson supported its profligacy, extravagance and authoritarianism, then he is a big government socialist wolf in conservative sheep’s clothing.

Suppose Mr. Johnson knew about these items and opposed them but could not exclude them from the omnibus bill. In that case, he negotiates as pathetically as a wimpy kid who lets the school bully snatch his lunch money without fighting back or at least screaming loudly enough to attract help and send the punk running.

If Mr. Johnson was unaware of the multifarious solid waste that polluted this bill, then his inattention to detail is terminal, and he has no moral authority to keep his post. If Mr. Johnson dozed off in negotiations with Democrats, then Republicans should liberate him from the speaker’s chair and let him catch his Z’s on a back bench in the House chamber.

Whether Mr. Johnson loved the stomach-turning contents of this mercifully abandoned legislation, lacked the will to resist it or somehow had no idea that these Leviathan droppings clogged this budget measure, none of these possible explanations recommends him to lead the incoming House’s 217 Republicans and their impending one-seat majority.

Until special elections in April fill the seats of incoming U.N. Ambassador Elise Stefanik, Mr. Trump’s new national security adviser, Mike Waltz, and Florida firebrand Matt Gaetz, Republicans will need 100% attendance and total unanimity to adopt even National Apricot Month. If anything more contentious prompts just one Republican to defect, the legislation would fail 216-216, provided that Democrats remain equally engaged and unified.

Walking this parliamentary tightrope will require someone with rock-solid conservative principles, a steel spine, an iron will, the energy of Hoover Dam and the focus and meticulousness of NASA’s Webb Telescope.

Does such a figure walk among the 119th Congress’ Republican conference? Who knows? What this omnibus catastrophe makes excruciatingly and tragically clear, however, is that Mike Johnson is not that leader.

• Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News contributor.